Fair trade and organizational innovation in Nepal: lessons from 25 Years of growth of the Association of Craft Producers (ACP)

The history of the Association of Craft Producers, a fair trade organization in Nepal, illustrates an important point often ignored during research on development organizations: that each will evolve along unique lines, not easily fitting into standard categories of 'for-profit' business, 'non-profit' organization, 'charity' or 'development non-governmental organization' used in the literature. Instead, organizational structures, ideas and cultures are constructed by practice as highly contingent processes and based on diverse logics. We argue against the managerialist idea that such organizations can be viewed simply as variants or 'hybrids', and we challenge conventional emphases on organizations as unitary structures or systems within an environment in favour of a more interactive, dynamic perspective in which actors in organizations are seen to change the environments in which they are located. Such an approach also provides support to ideas about 'positive deviance' as a method of learning that can potentially avoid formulaic thinking.